Idiot Box

Two years back it was Himesh Reshamiya who had caught some of our imagination and subsequnetly, much of our irritation. At then, he was omnipresent, omnipotent and at times, appeared ominscient too.

Mercifully, he thought he had done enough on music and singing, at least for time being, gave himself a new life, and so to us, by moving on to the thrills of acting, and we lived to see another day - until now, that this.

I don't know if you too have observed that this time Katrina Kaif and Khali are the most visible and popular irritants of the television these days.

Former is all over the place. She is literally in every movie made and song featured. She either smiles or blushes or rolls her eyes for every type of expression and emotion. As soon as one changes the channel, it is she again or a song from Jab We Met. I don't mind the song at all.

Khali is getting either free or paid publicity these days. Primarily Star News & Aaj Tak, and Zee TV to a lesser extent, are running private home network of Khali and his family at prime time these days.

So why Khali won or lost, what became of Undertaker, where and how Khali met his wife, what role Ranjit Singh plays, and whether or not Khali's height is increasing - it is all there daily.

For tail piece, let's talk about MTV. These days it is a rarity of sorts, and a private celebration in my household, when we actually see a song in this channel. They seems to have hit road and pit these days.

Phir Wohi Talash

I think during 1989-1990 or thereabouts, we had this tele-serial called Phir Wahi Talash telecasted at Sunday noons, and directed by legendry Lekh Tandon.

It had basically two love stories - first one a triangle between a subdued Ashwini Kumar, lovely Poonam Rehani nee Sarin, and a young ravishing Himani Shivpuri( this before she picked up weight ). This one was tense, surreptitiouss love story involving strict dad of the girl. Believe me, in case you don't remember, the by-default nasty looks of this dad would have paled our Hindi films villains in comparision.

But we liked the chori-chori set up. It looked so real similar to our own crush stories. My only grouse was the fact how come a lovely dame like Poonam Rehani could have anything to do with that hopless Ashwini Kumar.

The other was the chirpy & lively open romance between Salim miya and Shehnaaz. Don't remember the name of that dashing guy who played the Captain Salim(he was in the DON remake too), but sweet Shehnaz was definitely Nilima Azeem. She was the best friend of Poonam, and his so lovely father was fellow Lucknowite S. M. Zaheer.

Both the stories complimented each other perfectly, but somehow in the end serial lost its control. It had a lovely tital song sung by Chandan Das which I wanted to share.

न जी भर के देखा न कुछ बात की
बड़ी आरज़ू थी मुलाक़ात की

कई साल से कुछ ख़बर ही नही
कहाँ दिन गुज़ारा कहाँ रात की

उजालों कि परियां नहाने लगीं
नदी गुनगुनाये ख़यालात की

मैं चुप था तो चलती हवा रुक गयी
ज़बाँ सब समझते है जज़्बात की

सितारों को शायद खबर ही नही
मुसाफ़िर ने जाने कहाँ रात की

Charitraheen

Most of us may remember this serial base on Sharad Chandra Chattopadhya's novel of the same name being telecasted on DD. It had beautiful song sung by one of the leads quite frequently on the harmonium. The song was done by great Salil Chowdhari. Here it is.


शीतल मंजुल कोमल, तेरा आँचल
मेरी सुधियों में लहराया
झल-मल झल-मल
और एक शाम मैंने तेरे नाम लिख दी

हौले, हौले-हौले
पुर्वा ड़ोले, पुर्वा ड़ोले
ढलते दिन की अरुणाई में सपने घोले
सपने घोले, सपने घोले
और एक शाम मैंने तेरे नाम लिख दी

पंछी एक बिचारा, टूटा हारा, टूटा हारा
सुने नभ में उड़ता फ़िरता, मारा-मारा
मारा-मारा
और एक शाम मैंने तेरे नाम लिख दी

शीतल मंजुल कोमल, तेरा आँचल
मेरी सुधियों में लहराया
झल-मल झल-मल
और एक शाम मैंने तेरे नाम लिख दी

Neem Ka Ped

For those who want to see a stellar performance by Pankaj Kapoor, and do have some familiarity with Awadhi and Urdu, do not miss the fantastic television serial Neem Ka Ped being telecasted at 3.30 PM on DD National every Sunday. Even those who are not that comfortable with the language can give it a try.

It has been written by renowned Dr Rahi Masoom Raza, who had written the dialogues for BR Chopra's epic Mahabharat, and Yash Chopra's Lamhe, Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Golmal, Mili, Jhoothi and Subhash Ghai's Karz.

His novel Adha Gaon is one the greatest work of literature in Hindustani language. With it's back drop as partition, it will shake up your imagination as much as Bishma Sahini's Tamas did. It's a semi-autobiographical work set in the Raza’s village of Gangauli, in Ghazipur district on the fringes of Awadh whose Muslim inhabitants refuse to leave the country. Along with Srilal Shukla's Raag Darbari, it's a must read.

Coming back to Neem Ka Ped, its again set in village India. It's a story of a semi-bonded labourer, Budhai Ram - played(rather, lived) by Pankaj Kapoor, under a Muslim village zamindar. This Muslim landlord is under property dispute with his minister brother-in-law. As circumstances turn out to be, Budhai Ram gets caught between this fight of pride and property. The bone of contention is also the small piece of land on which he has planted a Neem tree as a kid.

His only hopes are his son Sukhai whom he wants to educate and that Neem tree with which he identifies himself, and his beliefs. How a powerless, but determined peasant gets out from this wrangle, saves his Neem Ka Ped against all odds, gets his son educated and turns the tables on his warring landlords. The story line is tremendous, with relevant and engaging sub plots.

All the characters are believable, and I am saying this because I have seen so many of them in real life. And more believable is Pankaj Kapoor aka Budhai Ram. He got so well under the skin of the character that one almost forgets he is somebody else. He is only Budhai Ram for the viewer for that half an hour.

The way he smiles -sheepishly, sarcastically, helplessly, all are different shades of emotion. The way he trudges to work, his steely resolve which he hides succesfully, only to be let out only once in a while, his body language - everything about him force you to take a bow for him.

The dialogues, Raza's forte, are excellent. Pronunciations are perfect. By perfect I mean that the words are spoken incorrectly - the actually way a typical illiterate villager mispronounces. This mispronunciation has been perfectly incorporated in the script and very beautifully carried off by the artists, for e.g. calling 'Lucknow' as 'Nakhlau', and 'Time' as 'Tame' are the typical phonetic mistakes.

Enough said. If I won't stop myself, I will continue on endlessly. But do check it out. It's a masterpiece.

Super Sundays of the yore

Those were the different times. There was no cable TV. There was no overdose of movies, films, celebrities. When a TV Remote was not the bone of contention in the house. No scheming saas-bahus. The days when Wednesdays and Fridays were special because those were the Chitrahar days. Children spent their evening playing outdoor games, not with Cartoon Network and elderly watched news at 2040 hours instead of Kasauti Zindagi Ki. Saturday was not an off-day, but the day of Giant Robot & Johnny Socco and Phool Khiley Hain Gulshan-Gulshan. And then those Super Sundays.

Today , Sunday or any other day is no different as far television is concerned. One doesn't even notice as they go by. But those Sundays, which we witnessed during our teens were very special. They were eagerly awaited. The day started with Rangoli. After skipping the Gurbani, sponsored by Taxila TV, came the real celebration time.

The Nine'o clock, time for real,quality cartoon. Ribticklers like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck giving us laughter or our adventure hero - HE-Man, The Master of Universe demolishing the Skeleton and company. Ofcourse this was before epics Ramayan , Mahabarat and Chanyaka claimed that prime time. I also adored the Mowgli and his face-off with SherKhan.

Then we had famous child detectives coming our way. The original, Ek Do Teen Char ("charo milker saath chalein to kerdein chamtkar"), Khel Khel Mein, and the adaptation from Hitchcock's famous The Three Investigators, - a serial called Super Six. But my most favourite series has to be Indradhanush, where Sunny Singh played the super genius kid who makes a computer in which a good alien gets in. And then that alien starts sending Sunny 's brother (played by Akshay Anand) in past and future to sort out their problems.There were interesting situations like seeing you own father as a new born baby in past or meeting your clone in future, and I said vooowwww what a hi-tech idea!! . Unfortunately, they stopped the serial in midway. We also had our own Star-Trek series - Space City -Sigma with Captain Shakti being half-human, half machine.

Who can forget the irrepressible Rajani, so naturally-funny Jayant Kripilani in Mr and Mrs and the first of the Anand Mahendru comedies -Idhar-Udhar. His Dekh-Bhai-Dekh , the mother of all comedies came much later. There was this serial called Wah Janab ,written by Sharad Joshi based on some muslim neighbour hood in Lucknow, which became launch pad for Shekhar Suman in television. Kiran Juneza looked ravishing . Those were the days when serials used to have terrific title songs - "Har khoob ke chehrey se uthatey hum Naqab, kya kehney Wah Janab!".

Neev took us to school days, and it was amazing that it was directed by a young guy a little more than our age. Faster Fanny was also very refreshing.

Siddhart Basu's quiz was a must watch. That was the first time probably I first heard about IITs, as they use to participate in this event.

I don't know about the others, I was immensely fascinated by Spiderman, even more than even Superman. That's probably because though I had read Superman comics, I saw Spiderman before on TV. I don't know why they showed it only for 15 mints. But yes, those 3 hours before Spiderman were very difficult to kill because that was time for regional language films, which apart from Punjabi, a little bit - I understood none.

Evenings, like every other Sunday evening was the Movie Time. One and only hindi movie of the week, though later they started movie on Saturdays as well. They had also started late night movies on Thursday, which I had sneaked quite a few ;-)

Well Sundays will never be same again, and the kids today are not even aware of the stuff they are missing. I miss them too. Someone please give me those super Sundays again. I wish some alien gets into my comp and sends me to my past :-)